Summer internship with a low GPA in Biology?

Career Opportunities & Internships
1

<p>Looking for an internship with pharma/biotech. Or rather, preferably biology-related industrial, but heck, anything goes at this point. You see...</p>

<p>I tried and tried and I couldn't get my cumulative GPA above 3.0 this semester. This semester definitely shows a marked improvement upon the disaster of the last one (2.75 to 3.1X, not sure exactly what the last number is yet), but it wasn't quite enough to pull my GPA to where I wanted it to be. I'm a student at Johns Hopkins University, and boy, am I starting to regret having chosen JHU. I'm one of the few non-premeds in the biology department, and competing against them for the grade is just... yeah.</p>

<p>Anyways. The problem is that I don't have any experience in research or interning yet, so I don't have the proverbial foot in the door going for me, either. I really need this internship to be something like that for me, but with the market being what it is, it's hard to be optimistic. What can I do to increase my chances of getting some kind of summer internship?</p>

<p>Also, any tips for making myself more competitive for the inevitable job search/grad school apps would be appreciated, other than busting ass ('cause I'm already trying to, and getting better at it as time goes on).</p>

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<p>You could try finding a professor to do research work for (with or without pay) during the regular year to get something on your resume. My niece did this at Amherst during her freshman year which made it easy to get internships later on.</p>

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<p>I’m already working on getting a research position for intersession/next semester, not asking for payment. There’s an obvious problem with that, though - most deadlines for summer internships are in the first three months of the year, and plenty of them in January alone. That doesn’t give me enough time to 1) get a letter of rec, or 2) even find one, because it takes a while, and 3) work at it long enough to be able to list it and have it mean much of anything.</p>

<p>Thanks for the answer, though.</p>

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<p>Would really appreciate any further help…</p>